


Moments

by StAnni



Category: The Magicians (TV)
Genre: Angst and Feels, F/M, M/M, Not A Fix-It, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-31
Updated: 2019-05-31
Packaged: 2020-03-30 22:36:00
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,378
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19036984
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/StAnni/pseuds/StAnni
Summary: He is sitting at the bar, a misplaced statue in the middle of the glaring idiocy of Friday night students.  The air is buzzing with unspent magic and there are very few things that irritate her as much as the drunken din of muggle co-eds.





	Moments

He is sitting at the bar, a misplaced statue in the middle of the glaring idiocy of Friday night students. The air is buzzing with unspent magic and there are very few things that irritate her as much as the drunken din of muggle co-eds.

She pushes her way through until she is next to him – perfumed wrists reaching over their shoulders, waving dollar bills to the overworked barman. He doesn’t notice at first and she has to repeat herself twice over the crush of music and conversation. “Eliot!” She tries again and he finally looks at her, surprised but even – like he is shaking off a daydream. “Alice the wise.” He says with a wry smile, but he doesn’t move, not to hug her, not to air-kiss her hello. She’s grateful for it. For a moment they just stand there, stupidly quiet in the nonsense. “Come on, I’m your ride.” She finally says, clutching her backpack to her shoulders and she is relieved that she doesn’t need to convince him – because she doesn’t know if she even wanted to. “Thanks.” He says, not over-exuberant but he does get up, all tall and perfect as ever, and follows her as she pushes open a way out to the door.

Outside her apartment she fumbles for the key as he watches, quiet, and her phone beeps with a message. No doubt from Margo. No doubt demanding a report on whether she’s managed to lasso Eliot away from the bar. Eliot, because he’s Eliot, already knows – probably from the roll of her eyes – as she finally unlatches the door and press inside. “Your turn to babysit?” He asks, following her in and she avoids his eye as she checks the message. Yep, Margo. “I don’t…It’s not like that.” She says, distracted, providing Margo with a stilted reply that she hopes conveys her particular flavor of annoyance. 

Eliot goes to the couch and sits down. He looks good – as fucking always. It’s infuriating. She probably looks like complete crap – she probably looks exactly how she feels. Obviously he’s not good, obviously he’s devastated. He’s probably the only person who knows and feels, precisely, how she feels. So it’s harder, for her. Not that Margo cares, or Julia or fucking Fogg. She is still on the unofficial roster of taking care of the wounded ex-king.

“Let me get you some coffee.” She says, dumping her backpack on the table and making her way through the boxes to her small kitchenette. He smiles a thank you and she can feel him watching her as she starts the kettle.

“Alice, you don’t have to do this.” He says. He sounds tired, bone tired – she knows that feeling – the heaviness of sorrow that just weighs there, rigor mortis. As it always does, every fucking time, his voice gives her pause – shakes her quietly from self-pity, anger, guilt. “It’s okay.” And she means it. And off his silence, she knows that he believes her. “I mean,” She glances at him as she scoops two heaped spoonfulls of cheap crushed caffeine into a cup “I guess it’s good for me too.”

When she hands him the coffee cup, ear first, he takes it with a quiet thanks and sips it slowly. He’s not drunk, she sees, he doesn’t even look buzzed. She sits down across from him, on the smaller chair, and sees that his jacket, which probably costs three month’s worth of rent, is tracked with mud at the left cuff. She can also see that there is a tremble in his fingers, which he tries to hide by pressing against the cup – his knuckles white. 

“How is your arm?” He asks, looking at her with eyes so clear that it hurts. He remembers that she fell a few weeks ago, trying to get him up the stairs when the elevator was busted. “It’s okay.” She lies.

They’ve never been what one would call friends, or even just “chummy” as Eliot would probably say. Margo is a fucking nightmare and she is out of place around them, have always been, but is even moreso now. And they’re always together – in that horrible apartment, helicoptering around, and then sometimes Josh is there too, along with that insipidly emotional Fenn. So actually, even though they’re not besties, she doesn’t mind being around Eliot, in her own space, when his entourage is not in the picture. “Margo says you had a fight.” She says, because she doesn’t want him to think that it is all just about babysitting and because it’s quiet and she always seems to know instinctively what awkward thing to say at the most awkward time.

To his credit he doesn’t do anything other but to shrug, glance at her and explain sombrely “She just wants me to be happy.” 

“I get it.” Alice says. She does get it. “I mean, why that is…you know…” 

He pauses a second after a sip and looks at her – softly – it’s the thing he does with her now, or maybe even he did it before too, it’s nice but it also hurts. So she clutches at the next subject, anything, as she gets up to go to the radiator. Her apartment is small, tiny actually – but always cold. “I heard Penny and Julia moved in together.” She says, not that the matter is of any interest to her at all, but it does make Eliot smile, so it’s a good call. “Yeah, I guess four years of barefaced hell can appropriately prepare her for that.” And she smiles as well, Eliot’s polite gut-punch honesty is one of the things that she really does like about him. “You know, you never said how he was…other Penny, I mean…in the sack” Eliot teases, gentle but mischievously, to which she rolls her eyes and feel a tickle of blood rush to her cheeks. “Stop.” She shakes her head and goes back to her spot on the chair – the air warming but just slightly. “Come on, I’m curious.” He needles, still kind and she shakes her head again, quickly thinking of a joke to amuse him “I’m not going to speak ill of the dead.”

Silence.

Bravo. She always knows what specifically horrendously awkward thing to say at any given moment. Well done, Alice. 

They don’t ever, ever talk about him. They talk around him – wide careful circles that peter out into somewhat comfortable conversation again after a while. They navigate the Quentin-shaped holes in their lives like they’re expert survivalists – instead of children really, scared, hurt children.

“Your hair is getting long. It's pretty.” Eliot observes. Kindness. Always so kind to her. And again, she appreciates the thought, the heart behind it – but it hurts. It hurts like someone pulling at a stitch – insistently and just so that it feels as if all the blocked up pain inside will come spilling out.

She’s had dreams about screaming maniacally into the night, into Quentin’s face, into Eliot’s face. She’s had dreams about tearing off her skin like a tattered old costume.

The apartment is so quiet, still so cold. They can hear the neighbor unpacking his dishwasher.

“Why is there mud on your jacket?” she asks, because his hair still looks the same and she should rather not try and be entertaining.

He looks at the rub of brown on the dark grey material for a long, long beat. Neighbor opens and closes cabinets.   
“I had a moment.” he finally answers, and this time she can see that it is him avoiding looking at her. 

She’s not mad at Eliot. She forgave him for his night with Quentin so long ago that it is comical to even think that there are any rocks left to throw. She’s not mad. But she does think about what could have been, in her darker hours, if Quentin had not forever disappeared into a rain of magic. She goes looking in the darkest corners of her heart for those answers that she doesn’t really want to know.

She knows enough to know that Eliot must do that too.

“I have those.” she says, and he looks at her, and eyes meeting they have their usual moment of recognition, of trust   
“Moments, I mean.”


End file.
